Original Date: October 17, 2025
Navigating your first job opportunity in academia can be both exciting and daunting. In this workshop, Alicia Decker and special guest Natasha Erlank offer helpful tips around negotiating your first job offer. This includes: understanding what might be included in a total compensation package, such as startup funds, teaching load, summer salary, and benefits; conducting research on compensation for similar positions; understanding your needs and priorities; and maintaining a confident yet friendly tone that communicates enthusiasm for the position and institution. Following the talk is a forum for discussion and questions from participants.
About Alicia C. Decker
Alicia C. Decker earned her doctoral degree in women’s studies from Emory University. She also has a master’s degree in gender studies from Makerere University in Uganda and a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology from the University of Minnesota. Her research and teaching interests include gender and militarism, African women’s history, and global feminisms. She is the author of In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender, and Militarism in Uganda (Ohio University Press 2014), and co-author with Andrea Arrington of Africanizing Democracies: 1980 to the Present (Oxford University Press 2015). Her scholarly articles have appeared in the International Journal of African Historical Studies, Women’s History Review, Journal of Eastern African Studies, History Teacher, Afriche e Orienti, Feminist Studies, and Journal of African Military History, as well as various edited book collections. She is co-editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Women’s History and serves on the editorial board at the Journal of African Military History.